1. Field of the Invention
This disclosure generally relates to financial data processing, and in particular it relates to customer profiling and consumer behavior analysis.
2. Background Art
It is axiomatic that consumers will tend to spend more when they have greater purchasing power. The capability to accurately estimate a consumer's spend capacity could therefore allow a financial institution (such as a credit company, lender or any consumer services company) to better target potential prospects and identify any opportunities to increase consumer transaction volumes, without an undue increase in the risk of defaults. Attracting additional consumer spending in this manner, in turn, would increase such financial institution's revenues, primarily in the form of an increase in transaction fees and interest payments received. Consequently, accurate estimation of purchasing power is of paramount interest to many financial institutions and other consumer services companies.
The purchasing power of an individual consumer is often related to the total purchasing power of the consumer's household. However, understanding spending at a household level has been a challenge for financial institutions, because it is very difficult to group consumers by household. This is especially problematic when other individuals in the household do not maintain tradelines with the financial institution. Accordingly, there is a need for a method and apparatus for identifying members of a household of a consumer and determining the size of wallet of the entire household.